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The tomb of voodoo queen Marie Leveaux Cities of the Dead in New Orleans --by Barbara Halverson New Orleans used to be famous mainly for the French Quarter, the Garden District, jazz, food and the corruption of our police and elected officials. But then Anne Rice came along with her vampire stories and changed all that. Now everyone wants to see the cemetery and the cast iron vault where the vampire Lestat hid his valuables over the years, and where the Mayfair family's tomb, from another Anne Rice novel, is located. Before we start a tour of these cities of the dead, you should know that if you come here you should not visit these cemeteries alone or when it's getting dark. There are lots of places to hide, and muggers and other desperados hang out in the shadows just waiting for victims. Go on an official tour with other people, or at least make sure that there are more than just a couple of you, and ask around for the cemeteries that are most safe. Some of them are in very bad neighborhoods where even the dead are nervous at night! Even if you prefer to go by yourself, make sure you visit when a tour group is in the area and leave when they do. Most tours take place between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm. First of all, the reason the dead are mostly buried above ground in New Orleans is because the water table is so high that caskets buried in the ground tended to pop right out of their graves after the first good rain. I think you'll agree that this is not a good thing. There are 42 cemeteries in the New Orleans area, each with its own history and famous people. Enter through the gates of any of them and you'll be greeted by rusty, fancy ironwork, statuary of all kinds, and what seems like miles of alleys through whitewashed tombs. Very mysterious places, even in broad daylight. Let's get the vampire Lestat's tomb out of the way first. This can be found in the first "American" cemetery, Lafayette Number One in the Garden District, and is the only cast iron vault in the cemetery. This cemetery was never real popular on the tour route prior to Lestat and his friends, but interest has picked up a lot since then and it is now being kept up better as a result. It was built originally because when the "Americans" arrived in the area they were uncomfortable (and unwelcome) in the French Quarter where the Creoles lived. Mostly of Irish and German ancestry, they moved upriver from the Quarter, into what we now refer to as "Uptown" and formed the first "American" suburb. Lafayette Number One has very limited visiting hours, from 10:00am to 2:00pm, so be sure to plan accordingly. It makes for an interesting stop on a tour of the Garden District. ************************* One of the most interesting tombs in the city can be found at St. Louis Number One. Located in Faubourg Treme, just north of the Quarter, this cemetery is not in a very safe neighborhood and should only be visited with a tour group. This is New Orleans' original cemetery. Tombs here date way back into the 1760s. Some of the more interesting tombs in St. Louis Number One are a huge tomb that holds the remains of some of the participants in the Battle of New Orleans; chess champion Paul Morphy; New Orleans' first black mayor, Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial. But the most famous and interesting tomb here is said to be where Voodoo Queen Marie Leveaux is buried. People still visit her tomb to light candles, perform various religious acts and leave offerings. Across the street, with its front facing N. Rampart St., is Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, which originally was the mortuary chapel built to handle the funerals and last rites of victims of yellow fever in 1826. It is the oldest surviving church in the city. You don't even want to think about visiting St. Louis Number Two; it's in a very rough neighborhood. Pass it by. St. Louis Number Three, though, is located near the foot of Esplanade Avenue, near Bayou St. John and across from Holy Rosary Church and is worth a visit. Many old families have tombs here, as well as many religious orders. You can take a bus from the Old U.S. Mint down the length of Esplanade Ave., a good way to see the far side of the Quarter and Faubourg St. John, and it drops you off right near the bayou. There are other interesting sights down this way, too: Pitot House around the corner on Moss St., and the new Orleans Museum of Art and City Park across the bayou. Highly recommended for Jazz Fest visitors, since it's the neighborhood of the Fair Grounds. ************************* Once you've done Lestat and Marie Leveaux, maybe your best bet is to take any of the three Canal Street lines-- the best is the "Canal-Cemeteries" line-- down to the foot of Canal Street. The cemeteries in and around here will give you what you're looking for. The neighborhood is a lot safer than the cemeteries on the fringe of the Quarter, for example. And there are tons of interesting and historical things in them as well. Tell the driver you're going to the cemeteries and he'll make sure you get off in the right place. Greenwood is the first cemetery you'll come to off the street car, and it's one of the most recognizable cemeteries because of the big monuments in the front. Some of the vaults here are the Elk's crypt, which is a burial mound with a statue of an elk on top, and the Fireman's Benevolent monument, which has a statue of a firefighter in the center. There are also lots of old family tombs in this cemetery, as well as many newer graves and tombs in the back portion. Odd Fellows' Rest The Catholic Church never tolerated segregation, so if you were African American and Catholic, you could buy a tomb in a Catholic cemetery and bury your dead right next to the white folks. But there were a lot of protestant cemeteries that wouldn't allow African Americans to be buried in them. So benevolent societies like the Odd Fellows bought land just outside of town for a cemetery so African Americans would not have to worry about having a place to spend eternity. This cemetery is surrounded by a ten-foot wall, and is probably the least explored of the cemeteries at the foot of Canal. The Masonic Cemetery is just down from Canal from the Odd Fellows and was purchased by this benevolent society by having the different lodges chip in to pay for it. People with money to purchase their own family tombs here did so, while others pitched in with their lodge brothers to buy larger tombs that would house a number of lodge members at one time. That way, no one was left out. St. Patrick Numbers One, Two, Three are the Catholic cemeteries at the foot of Canal. As the name suggests, these cemeteries were originally constructed by the local Irish to bury their dead. These all date back to the time of the big yellow fever outbreaks in the 1840s. They aren't as old as the St. Louis cemeteries, but they're excellent, and a lot safer than many of the others. Metairie Cemetery is on the other side of I-10 from Greenwood Cemetery. Before they built the highway, the two cemeteries were separated by the New Basin Canal. Metairie Cemetery was originally the Metairie Race Track, and you can still see the oval layout of the race course as you drive through the rows of tombs. This is a very prominent cemetery, with over a dozen mayors, more than thirty kings of Carnival, two or three governors of Louisiana (including the only black governor, P.B.S. Pinchback), as well as many, many prominent New Orleanians. It's best to drive through this cemetery, as it's very big. ************************* And really that's enough to take up quite a bit of your visit to N'awlins. When you've finished studying the cities of the dead, you can come back to life in the Vieux Carré with some great jazz, superb food, and all the fun you can stand to have!

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